In recent years homeowners and others have devoted more time and energy than ever before creating and maintaining a "manicured" lawn. Such homeowners frequently trim the grass and thereafter remove all leaves, twigs, grass clippings and other debris from the lawn. Various manufacturers have capitalized on this market by providing, in addition to more versatile lawnmowers, weed trimmers and the like, an abundant supply of hand-held pneumatic devices (both electrical and gasoline powered) to vacuum and/or blow leaves and debris from the lawn. Such vacuum/blowers are relatively light in weight but are tiring when carried by an adult for extended periods of time during operation. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,522,115; 5,638,574 and 4,325,163 show but a few of the vacuum/blowers now available. However, standard hand-held vacuum/blowers do not always provide uniform air movement to a lawn. For example, during a vacuum operation, certain areas of a lawn may be adequately cleaned of leaves and trimmings while other areas are inadvertently skipped, requiring the equipment user to return or double back to remove all leaves visible. This is extremely troublesome and time consuming while vacuuming large lawns and lawns which have uneven surfaces.
Thus, in order to increase the user's convenience and to save time and energy in the lawn vacuuming process, the present invention was conceived and one of its objectives is to allow users to uniformly vacuum a lawn or other surface at a consistent vacuum height regardless of its size, flatness or texture without becoming overly tired in the process.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide a lawn vacuum attachment which can be mounted on any of a number of standard leaf blower/vacuum devices and to increase the width of the suction opening.
It is also an objective of the present invention to provide an attachment for a standard lawn vacuum which allows the user to adjust the nozzle height, depending on the particular lawn, driveway, pavement or other surface conditions encountered.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide an attachment and method which can be easily affixed or removed from a conventional hand-held lawn vacuum without special tools or training.
Various other objectives and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed description is set forth below.